External peripheral data storage systems such as external disk drives and card readers are standalone units that are commonly mounted to and communicate with a host computer, generally via an external cable such as a universal serial bus (USB) cable or Firewire™ cable.
One wide-spread use of an external peripheral data storage systems is for creating backups of data in the host system so to minimize the risk of a permanent loss or corruption of data due to a hardware or software damage to the host system. The backup operation may be a scheduled operation wherein the host system is configured to routinely backup data to the external peripheral data storage systems at pre-selected times, such as every midnight. In current products, however, even though a host system performs a scheduled backup operation to a external peripheral data storage system at a pre-selected time(s), the external peripheral data storage system is often kept in an ON state by a user at all times to reduce the occurrence of an OFF state of the external peripheral data storage system during a scheduled backup time, particularly if the backup is scheduled for a time when the user is unavailable to return the peripheral data storage system to an ON state. As such, the external peripheral data storage systems are left in an ON state for longer than necessary, resulting in inefficient power usage and reducing the overall longevity of the external peripheral data storage system.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method for facilitating the power cycling of a peripheral data storage system for performing of scheduled backup operations to peripheral data storage system.